10 April 2013

Now, There Really Is No Such Thing As Society

'Rainbow coalition': After the Left lost the economic argument, they
realised there was no future in brute force collective industrial
action. So they embraced the notion of individual 'rights' as a way of
furthering their agenda

By
Richard Littlejohn

Back in 1987, Mrs Thatcher was
monstered over an interview in which she said: ‘There is no such thing
as society.’ The Left seized on this remark as evidence of her heartless
indifference to the plight of ordinary people.

What
she was actually doing was condemning the use of ‘society’ as a
convenient shorthand excuse for individual deficiencies, disappointments
and delinquency. A quarter of a century ago, as in some quarters today,
there was a knee-jerk readiness to blame ‘society’ for everything from
drug addiction to violent crime.

Mrs Thatcher was also criticising the automatic tendency of people to look to the State as a cure for all ills.

She was of the firm conviction
that society is the sum of its parts — individuals, families, churches,
voluntary organisations, businesses. It was her belief that people
expected too much from government, concentrated too much on their
‘rights’ and ‘entitlements’ and not enough on their obligations.

We
all have a duty to help ourselves and our neighbours. Hers was a vision
of a liberated, bottom-up society, not the bureaucratic top-down
version favoured by Socialists.

It
is especially relevant to today’s ferocious debate over welfare —
safety net versus cradle-to-grave lifestyle option. Labour naturally
favours a system in which the State Will Provide, even if it traps
people in dependency.

In 1987, Mrs Thatcher was monstered over an interview in which she said: 'There is no such thing as society'

If you make idleness a worthwhile career choice, why should anyone look for a job? It’s not their fault, is it?

After the Left lost the
economic argument, following Thatcher’s third general election victory,
they realised there was no future in brute force collective industrial
action. So they embraced the notion of individual ‘rights’ as a way of
furthering their agenda.

Labour
decided it could no longer rely on white, working-class trades
unionists to secure power. So it set about building what by then had
become known as a ‘rainbow coalition’ based on the notion of
victimhood.

Rather than
‘society’ the Left fastened on to ‘community’ as their buzzword. This
didn’t mean community in its traditional sense, it meant ‘minority’.

It
involved carving up society into myriad client groups and stoking their
grievances, real or perceived, which could only be assuaged by new laws
and lashings of taxpayers’ money.

Mass immigration was also part of the
game plan, along with the creation of a vast class of highly-paid public
sector apparatchiks to service the ‘community’, all of whom were
expected to return the favour by voting Labour.

First
you divide people in terms of race, then sexuality, until eventually
every single section of the population is sliced up into ever more
microscopic sub-sectors.

It
is how we’ve ended up with the impertinent absurdity of people applying
for a parking permit being forced to fill in a form declaring whether
they are still the same sex they were born.

This
is in the name of fighting ‘discrimination’ against people with
different ‘gender identities’. Having just about run out of every
conceivable permutation of racial, religious and sexual classification,
the fragmentation of Britain into a million competing client groups is
almost complete. Almost, but not quite.

As
I wrote on Friday, the police in Manchester are even identifying goths,
punk rockers and heavy metal fans as‘vulnerable’ minorities.'

This week we learn that the Equalities and Human
Rights Commission is demanding that everyone from druids to vegans and
'green' activists should be given special treatment at work

This week we learn that the
Equalities and Human Rights Commission is demanding that everyone from
druids to vegans and ‘green’ activists should be given special treatment
at work.

Actually, this is
merely codifying what is becoming established as common practice in the
public sector. I’ve had fun in the past with the Pagan Police
Association and Jedi knights in the prison service.

Now
all employers, private and public, will have to make concessions to
these poor, persecuted minorities. For instance, druids should be given
time off to go on ‘pilgrimages’ to Stonehenge.

Vegetarians
will not have to clean fridges which have contained meat. And if
Christians are finally to be allowed to wear a small crucifix, then
Greens must be allowed to lecture fellow staff about how their cars are
killing polar bears.

I’ve been telling you for years that environmentalism will soon be granted official religious status.

Changes: When the Left talks about 'equality' what it actually means is 'preferential treatment'

When the Left talks about ‘equality’ what it actually means is ‘preferential treatment’.

I’ve
always considered myself a liberal in the truest sense of the word. As
far as I’m concerned people can do what they like provided it doesn’t
hurt or interfere with anyone else. But your own lifestyle choices also
bring responsibilities. Why would a vegan want to get a job which is
likely to bring him contact with meat, for instance?

If
people want to dress up as Merlin and howl at the moon, that’s their
prerogative. But why should any employer be expected to give them paid
time off to pursue it? You may well feel like turning up at work in a
loin cloth and a Red Indian head-dress. But surely your boss should have
an equal right to insist you wear a suit.

Just
as ‘multiculturalism’ means forcing the host society to adapt to
immigrants, not the other way round, so ‘equal rights’ mean compelling
everyone else to adapt to individual caprice and prejudice.

There’s
a difference between ‘liberal’, which means tolerant, and ‘libertine’,
which means indulging in dissolute, selfish behaviour.

Sadly,
in Britain the pendulum has swung too far in favour of libertine.
People think they can do what they like, when they like, where they
like. And to hell with everyone else.

Thus
the rights of the ‘dogging community’ are allowed to trample over the
rights of dog walkers. Parents can’t take their children to the park for
fear of stumbling over naked perverts playing daisy-chains in the
bushes — with official approval.

Criticise
any kind of behaviour, no matter how repellent to most people, and you
will not only be howled down as a bigot, increasingly you can be
prosecuted for ‘hate crime’ and hounded out of your job.

The
idea that anyone ever has to take into account the impact of their
actions on their fellow citizens in the wider community has been thrown
out with the bathwater in the name of individual ‘rights’.

Mrs
Thatcher may have been quoted out of context all those years ago. But
now that she has died, her detractors on the Left have finally ensured
that there really is no such thing as society.